What was the brightest stellar event ever recorded?
On April 17, in the year 1006, a new light suddenly appeared within what is now the constellation of Lupus. Observers from all over the world recorded the…
If elephants were extinct, would we ever be able to figure out that they had trunks? Why or why not? What does this suggest about our current understanding of extinct organisms?
Elephants’ trunks are muscular hydrostats, which means they are made up of mostly muscle and have no bones or joints. An elephant’s trunk has over 40,000 muscles, which…
Why did NASA astronaut Don Pettit say that we don’t have the technology to go to the moon, that we destroyed it? What was he intimating?
He meant exactly what he said. For example.. The memory used in the Apollo onboard computers used core store. This consisted of tiny ferrite beads threaded onto a…
Do polar bears get confused when they see brown bears?
Rather than being confused by brown bears, Polar bears have a very consistent reaction to them. They are terrified by their brown cousins. Even a relatively small grizzly…
Why didn’t Alexander the Great conquer China?
If Alexander came to China, he would have come from the West. Suppose his entire force made it through the Taklamakam deserts. Then he would have run into…
Which animals can never be tamed? And why?
1.The zebra is one of the most surprising animals we have never tamed. In fact, in a sense, it’s quite surprising. After all, horses and donkeys have been…
Why did the Black Death “disappear” after 1352?
Black Death was virulent and deadly. As such, everyone got it and you either lived (unlikely but possible) or died (most likely) By the middle of the 14th…
Why don’t we send a Hubble-type space telescope out to orbit Pluto or Uranus so we can get better pictures of deep space stars and solar systems?
Pluto is, in astronomical terms, right on top of us. It is only 0.000628 light years to Pluto. This is Barnard’s Galaxy. It is one of the nearest galaxies to…
How did World War 2 era diesel submarines have such exceptional ranges of over 21000 miles while similarly sized ships only had ranges of around 6000 miles?
A lot of good answers, but only one of them even remotely mentioned a specific trick that US WW2 Submariners did to get extra range, and by the…
What are some incredible pictures that no one has seen before?
1.This is a picture of the spacecraft NASA leaving our atmosphere. 2. This is how brick roads are being built in the Netherlands. 3. Blood vessels of one…